The story begins with the defeat of the Kingdom of Dalmasca at the hands of the powerful Archadian Empire, and subsequent occupation. Two years later, an energetic young street thief called Vaan finds himself sucked into the languishing resistance movement led by none other than Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, princess heir to the Dalmascan throne, thought dead. Ashe is determined to regain her kingdom and take revenge against the Archadians, and the key to this might just be the legendary nethicite once used by her ancestor to unite Ivalice under his rule.

The story is also about Basch fon Ronsenberg, a proud knight of Dalmasca thought to have betrayed his king on the eve of Dalmasca's defeat, now imprisoned in a cell far from human contact. It's about a dashingSky Pirate called Balthier and his frosty Viera co-pilot Fran, who have their eye on the riches they can acquire while tagging along with Ashe. It's about Penelo, Vaan's childhood friend who finds herself yanked into the chain of events thanks to her relationship with Vaan. It's about Archadian nobleman Vayne Solidor and his ruthless campaign of intrigue and reformation, and about his young brother Larsa, who wishes to unravel the web of deceit his brother has woven.

Final Fantasy XII is a complicated and detailed game noticeably different in storyline from other Final Fantasy games; whilst other games focus on individual characters, XII is less about people and more a story of Nations and nationalism, and the lengths some will go to gain power and control destiny. That's not to say it isn't a character study, with Judge Gabranth's clouded conscience and dark history being one of the major subplots - and hence why he's on the boxart. It's full of intrigue and interweaving stories, tactical team-based fighting, well-crafted dialogue and Limit Breaks (here called Quickenings). It explores the ideas of freedom, revenge, loyalty, peace, and the importance of dreams. It's also a Deconstruction of the "Find powerful McGuffin to Save the World" plot that's been around as long as the genre has, taking a much more sombre look at the pursuit of what is essentially a Weapon of Mass Destruction and the lengths to which people would go to gain — or regain — power.

And, as you may gather below and on some of the sub-pages, FFXII is a little uneven in its treatment of all this. The game had a deeply troubled production history that culminated in longtime Square-Enix veteran Yasumi Matsuno suffering a severe depressive episode and quitting his role as director and eventually leaving the company. While the final game has many virtues, it still has places where it's clear the game's production route took its toll.

The game happily ties in old Final Fantasy adversaries, as well: Gilgamesh makes his requisite cameo, as do several of the main antagonists from the earliest iterations of the series, as optional summoned beasts.note Chaos and his Elementals, Emperor Mateus, Zeromus, and Ex-Death/Exodus. Still, it's very much a standalone title that can be played without having any previous Square Soft knowledge.

It is also the first in the series to go into extreme detail on the nature of items and locations. Expect to find tufts of Phoenix Down and strips of rotten flesh instead of just the items, thorough explanations on the topics of evolutionary biology and monster habitats, a comprehensive history of Ivalice and its tribes and races, and incredible amounts of flavor text in every page of the in-game encyclopedia.

For the first time since Final Fantasy II, the player has the option of strategizing around weapon types and character skills almost indefinitely. It's also noticeable as having a step up in difficulty compared to previous installments, and demanding more hours of investment from the player. Whereas in previous games you can level up reasonably well by just defeating every enemy you encounter en route from point A to point B, in XII enemies in one area can be very easy and in the next Nintendo Hard, so the game will force you to level grind just to progress with the plot.

An HD Updated Re-release for PlayStation 4, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, was released in July 2017 in all major regions (July 11 in Western regions, July 17 in Japan), implementing the International Zodiac Job System release and all of its changes and features, including a high-definition retexturing and orchestrated music tracks. A Steam port was released in February 2018.

This game provides examples of:

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Abandoned Mine: Several instances. The Lhusu and Henne Mines are a variant, in that they're still in use, but they just happen to be abandoned at the time the party visits them due to outside circumstances. The Barheim Passage, however, plays it straight.

Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Garamsythe Waterway. The in-game codex makes it clear that it actually isn't a sewer, but an underground channel used to bring water to the city, since Rabanastre is in the middle of a desert; hence the sluice control valve to prevent flooding. Its uncleanliness and infestation has gotten to sewer levels because Cúchulainn is there.

Achievement System: The "Sky Pirate's Den" gradually collects sprites as the player meets certain tasks like completing story mode or hunting down rare Elite Marks. Each sprite in the Den clearly details the accomplishment it was awarded for. In The Zodiac Age, the Sky Pirate's Den was eliminated in favor of standard PlayStation 4 Trophies, most of which match what was originally in the Sky Pirate's Den, though with a few new ones added in. It was added back in the 1.04 update.

The Antlion hunt revolves around this. The person who posted the hunt is a mother whose children went to explore the mines while said monster was on the rampage.

Migelo when Penelo gets kidnapped by Ba'Gamnan. He's not her actual father, but he obviously cares about her and the other foster children under his wing, including Vaan. It even makes him, a relatively old Bangaa, storm up to the Sandsea and shout at Balthier and Fran, two known sky pirates, to get her back.

The Diabolos quest involves a demon monster in the Lhusu Mines of Bhujerba that parents threaten misbehaving children with, not knowing that it's actually real. "Better be good or Diabolos will get you."

The main party are Vaan, Penelo, Princess Ashelia, Basch, Balthier/Ffamran … and Fran. Fran has two sisters called Jote and Mjrn.

The Judges seem not to be this at first glance: Ghis, Bergan, Gabranth, Zecht, Drace, and Zargabaath. Then you learn that Gabranth's real name is Noah. By extension, this would make the twin Ronsenburg brothers Basch and Noah.

Less prominently, the weapons shop in Balfonheim is run by Beruny and Emma.

There's a much more complicated story here than most fans give it credit for, but considering the development teambehind it, you'll be doing a lot of reading and deciphering a lot of subtext if you want the full picture.

A lot of cool ideas, such as the backstories for the Espers, that were probably left on the cutting room floor have at least some existence as text background in the Bestiary.

Always Chaotic Evil: The Urutan-Yensa and the Baknamy are universally reviled and nobody has anything nice to say about them.

The Tomb of Raithwall, a town-sized mausoleum to store the body of Ivalice's equivalent of Cyrus the Great.

The Necrohol of Nabudis is also an example, but unlike the Tomb of Raithall, it's a mausoleum by accident.

Antidote Effect: Subverted. Poison is a pretty hazardous status ailment, and you don't want it to compound (Poison + Sap will make your HP go down the drain quickly). The game mechanics (items are used nearly instantly) help it a lot.

Anyone Can Die: None of the six main characters, mind you, but the death toll for this story is reasonably high. Reks, King Raminas, and Rasler all perish during the prologue, all but one of the Judge Magisters die, all but one of the Guest Star Party Members die, everyone in Nabudis prior to the main events, and anyone elsethe Occuria might've exterminated through the use of 'Dynast Kings' much like Raithwall.

Upon entering most screens, an auto-save is created to let you reload at the start of the screen.

When selling Loot, holding Triangle will let you instantly select all of a Loot item to sell in bulk, making selling large numbers of items quicker.

The L1 button activates a speed-up feature to hasten gameplay by 2x or 4x times (changed in the menu or by holding L1 and Up/Down on the D-pad), making overall gameplay quicker and making it easier to explore the game's large areas.

The L3 button brings up the full map as an overlay on the screen during normal gameplay, so you can keep track of where you're going without having to constantly go into the main map.

A lot more Gambits are sold much earlier, making it easier to set up your party properly earlier in the game.

The air crab in Archades only needs three chops to ride instead of nine, substantially cutting down that sidequest for players not interested in it beyond progressing in the story. You can also gather the full 28 needed to get a sandalwood chop much faster by turning on the aforementioned speed-up feature.

As a carry over from the International release, treasures are considerably simplified. A lot of treasures holding rare items, particularly spells and Technicks, will always spawn and always contain that rare item. The Diamond Armlet's mechanics are considerably simplified; aside from chests in only a couple end-game areas, it makes chests always contain a Knot of Rust or a Meteorite, and has no effect on the mentioned rare items so you don't have to worry about missing something good.

Applied Phlebotinum: Mist. Appears as a fog in high concentration, Mist increases the power of magic, causes mutations in monsters, and can have negative effects on the environment. It can also cause races that are sensitive to it, such as Viera, physical discomfort.

Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only three active characters at a time out of your six-man party, but they can switch out anytime.

Artificial Brilliance: What you get if you use your Gambits well. Gambits to cast healing spells or use healing items only execute once when appropriate. For example, if you have all three party members with Gambits to use Eye Drops on an ally inflicted with Blind, the first party member to get their next turn will use Eye Drops on the Blinded ally and the other two will keep fighting, unless more than one person has been inflicted with Blind. Allies can also detect an enemy's elemental weaknesses even if you don't know them, so Gambits that trigger when fighting an enemy weak to a certain element will go off appropriately.

Artificial Stupidity: What you get if you use your Gambits poorly, also also because of poor programming. Gambits for Steal will continue to execute as long as the conditions are met again, even if the enemy in question has already be Stolen from (and thus cannot be Stolen from again). There's also no Gambits that can tell if an enemy is immune to certain Technicks, so Gambits for those abilities will keep going off regardless of if they'll have no effect. For Gambits that target allies with Cura or Curaja, or enemies with group-hitting spells, the caster cannot pick targets intelligently, leading to a healing spell going off but by the time it affects an ally they've been killed, or a damaging spell targeting an enemy that dies before it is cast and thus the time spent charging the spell is wasted.

Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Occuria. Not that it stops them from meddling in the affairs of Ivalice and ensuring history follows the 'correct' path they've decided to chart for it.

They cannot be controlled, but they can be killed and so require healing and buffing like normal party members if you want to get any real use out of them, and a lot of the optional Espers cannot be acquired until late in the game. Furthermore, the strongest Espers require three Mist Charges to summon — that is, you need to give up all your MP, although you can freely Syphon MP from the Espers, as they get summoned with full MP Gauges and none of their attacks require any. They have unchangeable gambits which affect all their actions, including the Limit Break that you're probably looking for, all of which have wildly different (and mostly impractical) ways of activation. The Esper will go away, too, if its master is KO'd. It simply isn't worth it.

The Zodiac versions fix this by allocating the new Mist Gauge to summon Espers, so you don't have to worry about your MP being chewed down to zero when you summon Zodiark, for instance. Also, you can finally control them manually and release their super attacks as you wish, though you still can't change their gambits.

Plot-related accessories and weapons including the Goddess' Magicite, the Dawn Shard, the Sword of Kings, and the Treaty Blade. The former two give you good magick protection but don't allow you to cast any, because they drain your MP to 0. The latter two, meanwhile, aren't so much impractical as bland, since reasonably priced weapons sold at the same time they're collected have better stats.

Background Magic Field: The Mist, which invades all Ivalice with some locations having more concentration than others. It even affects the gameplay; the higher the concentration, the more MP you can recover by movement.

Bad "Bad Acting": Listen carefully to Basch during the assassination scene during the prologue. That's not bad acting; that's Gabranth not quite managing to imitate his brother.

Bait-and-Switch Boss: In the Necrohol of Nabudis, where a Catoblepas is slaughtered by Fury, an adorable little bunny.

Bare-Fisted Monk / Kung-Fu Wizard: With proper set ups, your party can become this, and one license on the grid board powers up your strength when fighting barehanded. Final Boss Vayne starts the first phase of his fight by attacking you with powerful magic and his own fists and feet!

Bare Your Midriff: Other than the main party, this type of fashion is widespread in Dalmasca, thanks largely due to the kingdom being located on a desert.

Bat Out of Hell: Several varieties, including some that drink blood. A rare variation of one drinks sap instead.

Become Your Weapon: The final battle is broken into three separate battles, the last of which sees Vayne and Venat fusing.

Beef Gate: Contrary to most other Final Fantasy games, which tend to be rather linear, XII's world is as wide-open as the old-school NES games, with the same empowered enemies waiting for you if you go somewhere you're not supposed to. However, level grinding to be able to take them allows players to go to areas they're not meant to access yet and get equipment and spells ahead of time.

The Necrohol of Nabudis is an oft-cited example. The enemies are most probably beyond your handle at the earliest time you can access the area. However, many people still visit the area prematurely due to the game-breaking Zodiac Spear. This method is removed in the zodiac versions, however.

Ditto with the Feywood. If for whatever reason you want to avoid fighting the Elder Wyrm after the Mjrn quest, you can take a detour to the south of Golmore Jungle and head east to Paramina Rift. Problem is, you're advised to head east immediately; the enemies of the Feywood, from tomatoes to rabbits to wolves, are a magnitude above the level of the Elder Wyrm (who is about Lv.20). If you're stupid enough to wander to the second area and head west, you'll find yourself in a cut-off part of Henne Mines populated by Lv.60-65 bats. Death is guaranteed.

The Big Bad Shuffle: At first Vayne is presented as the main villain, but as the game progresses attention turns to Dr. Cid as the main researcher for Archadia's weapons technology including nethicite. Then you find out Cid is just a puppet for Venat who is using him to manipulate the world political stage. Then near the end of the game you find out it's more friendship than manipulation between the two, and Vayne is also in on their plan. Vayne is widely considered the central Big Bad since he's The Emperor and the Final Boss, but Cid and Venat are also strong candidates to the title.

Big Fancy Castle: The royal palace of Rabanastre, which has a spacious garden and secret passages (including one leading directly to the sewer) enough to support the Resistance room for guerrilla warfare. Nabudis used to have one as well; the Necrohol of Nabudis level largely consists of the ex-residence of Rasler and his father.

Book Ends: The tutorial/intro culminates in Gabranth impersonating Basch to kill King Raminas and ensure Dalmasca's fall. During the ending cutscene, Basch impersonates Gabranth to stop the battling fleets before Dalmasca is destroyed in the crossfire.

Boss in Mook Clothing: Many. If an enemy is docile (read: won't attack you unless provoked), it's probably because it's this trope and the developers are giving you fair warning to step lightly around it.

Rare Game enemies tend to be this. By their nature Rare Game are stronger enemies that only appear under certain circumstances, but they tend to be much stronger than the normal enemies in the area, often to the point of this trope. Yet they tend to look just like normal enemies save for maybe being bigger and a different color.

In the Estersand, the first area of the game you explore when leaving Rabanastre, you'll run across a Wild Saurian, a giant T-Rex enemy with several thousand HP. By the time they appear deeper in the desert as normal enemies you're strong enough that they're merely Elite Mooks.

Entites and Elementals, who appear alongside normal enemies but have level three magicks and tens of thousands of HP.

You may accidentally stumble on Henne Mines while navigating through the fogged areas of the Feywood towards Giruvegan (or, if you're suicidal, when you're taking a detour on the way to Mt. Bur-Omisace). And you'll find that no matter how hard you attack, cast spells, or do Quickenings, the bats there won't freaking die. In fact, it's 99% you who'll die instead. This is because they're all above Lv.60, which, by the way, is higher than the Final Boss (the average level of the party should be about 45-50 by this point).

The International release turns Archaeoaevis into one. Previously a Unique EnemyElite Mook found in the Zertinan Caverns, it had some 15,000 HP and wasn't too tough if you were strong enough to survive the caverns. The International release buffs it up to a Level 70-ish monstrosity with several hundred thousand HP, putting it on-par with end-game bosses. Ironically it's now stronger than the actual boss of the area, Adremmelech.

Boring, but Practical: The Steal Technick. You start the game with it, half your party starts with the License for it, and the ones that don't can acquire it quickly. Stealing from enemies will quickly give you a big boost in your loot income, and it's fairly simple to set up your gambits so you attempt to Steal from enemies at least once before you kill them.

Bragging Rights Reward: A lot of the best stuff in the game is so hard to acquire that it can fall into this; do you really need it so bad if you can spend hours fighting powerful enemies to acquire it?

The Wyrmhero Blade. The highest attack in the game, automatically grants Bravery and Faith status, and has an 80% combo rate. But to get it you need to beat Yiazmat (which is only unlocked after completing the other 44 hunts) and Omega Mk. XII. Thus, by the time you can get the blade, you've beaten the game's strongest enemies. All that's left is hunting rare enemies and elementals for rare loot and killing the optional Espers, which you're obviously strong enough to do without it.

The Tournesol is not much better. Getting it requires several hours hunting down rare and powerful enemies to farm rare loot from them, and its a Guide Dang It! from start to finish to know that you need those loot items. Your reward is one of the best weapons in the game, but as good as the Tournesol is, you can finish the game just fine without it.

Other ultimate items (Danjuro, Yagyu Darkblade, Staff of the Magi, Grand Armor, Grand Helm) have a single digit percentage of dropping from Rare enemies that only spawn under specific circumstances.

Subverted with the Zodiac editions, where you can bring these items into Trial Mode, where you'll have to beat these bosses all over again.

Brick Joke: The petitioner for the Wraith mark mentions the ghost has begun haunting the Garamsythe Waterway and suspects it came into being to seek vengeance for the slain rats and other vermin living in the sewers. Guess what Vaan spent his time doing to train prior to the game? If you talk to the petitioner several times, she actually subtly implies she knows Vaan is the culprit:

"I'm not pointing any fingers here..."

Broken Aesop: At the end of the Gil Snapper hunt, Elder Brunoa gives a speech about how it's wrong to kill animals to sell parts of them at market, in a game where this is your primary source of income, at the end of a mission where you killed an animal just because someone was willing to pay you to do so. In an area not too far away from packs of Worgen, which occasionally drop a loot item worth more than a thousand gil, no less.

While there are plenty of opportunities to wander into areas with monsters stronger than you are meant to face yet, all the paths to places important to the plot are locked via gates, bridges, weather, Imperial guards, etc.

You can get into the Mosphoran Highwaste long before you're meant to by spooking a guard with a chocobo, but even that option is a Broken Bridge at the beginning of the game.

Many areas around Dalmasca lie in jagd; areas where skystones, the magicite that powers airships, do not function. This prevents you from simply flying everywhere in the Strahl and forces you to walk, until the late game when you get a skystone that can function in jagd.

Brutal Bonus Level: Trial Mode in the Zodiac releases. A 100 stage gauntlet of enemies that eventually becomes a Boss Rush that includes the strongest Hunts and Rare Game in the game, the Espers, Omega, Hell Wyrm, Yiazmat, and culminating with a battle against all five Judge Magisters. Word of God is that this mode was specifically designed to push players to their limits, even if they had a Level 99 party with the best equipment in the game.

Camera Screw: The Zodiac version of the game lets you control Espers like a playable character. Unfortunately, the camera does not adjust for an Esper's massive size and is stuck on the default camera settings used for the normal sized human characters. Have fun trying to see what's around you with a giant god of destruction blocking most of the screen!

Grey and Gray Morality — your heroes are not all that virtuous or noble at times, and their enemies are not cardboard cut-out evil. Associated with this is War Is Hell and what it can do to people.

The examination of what is truly important when it comes to being loyal to a kingdom — loyalty to its ideals, its people, its rulers, or the physical kingdom itself, and if any of these should be sacrificed for the sake of the others.

What true power really is — is it military might, physical strength, emotional strength, or the value of your lineage? And what are the moral ways to use those types of power?

Family: Both losing it literally or being estranged from it. And what leads one to that; as well as how it affects you.

Vaan is an orphan following the death of his brother; and his desire to avenge him as well as his status as an orphan street urchin defines and drives his motivations.

Ashe lost both her husband and her father in the war and yet her duty as Princess require her to push on.

Basch and his brother are on opposite sides of the war following the loss of their mother and their conflict forms much of the story.

Balthier and Fran both split from their family over ideological reasons and cut off all ties with them.

Vayne wants to secure his family's control and legacy against those who would threaten it (The Senate; rival houses of the Empire; the occuria). This drives him to actions that cost him his family members; both literally as he kills his father and through driving Larsa to oppose him.

Chainmail Bikini: Weirdly, while the Archadian soldiers all wear full armor, a lot of the Dalmascan soldiers seen in the opening cutscenes fight with plate armor with no mail undershirt or other armor and noticeable gaps between the plates. Rasler himself is shot through the very wide opening around the throat of his armor during the Battle of Nalbina Fortress, something he might have survived if the hole had never been there in the first place.

Character Filibuster: Gerun sweet-talks Ashe for close to five minutes straight, barely letting her get a word in edgewise, and when she finally asks a legitimate question, it goes ballistic.

Chekhov's Gun: An early cutscene introduces Balthier's voice changer device. It's completely forgotten until the very end of the game, when Vaan uses it to impersonate Larsa, and Basch uses it impersonate Gabranth..

Class and Level System: In the International Zodiac Job version, you have to pick your job before you can start getting licenses for that character, but thankfully earned LP up to that point is still retained. You can't change classes once chosen like in other FF games, however. Some characters are naturally better at some jobs than others due to their base stat growth. The jobs available are:

Red Mage: Fights using all forms of magic (along with staves and cloth armor), but misses out on the last 2 tiers of each. Good for high magic characters.

Shikari: Combination of hunter and ninja classes, fights with daggers and ninja swords and wears light armor. Ties with Monofunu as Vaan's best class.

Time Mage: Fights with buffing and debuffing spells, uses crossbows and heavy armor. One of the better choices for Fran.

Uhlan: Dragoon class, fights with spears and heavy armor. One of Basch's best classes.

White Mage: The healer, fights with rods and cloth armor. Penelo and Ashe both perform excellently at it.

Classically Trained Extra: The majority of the voice actors are classically trained theatre actors, some of whom had no prior voice acting credits and were simply chosen because of their theatrical experience. Thanks to a combination of good choices and Woolseyisms, it worked very well.

They put up a paling to make themselves immune to physical damage, a barrier to become immune to Magick attacks, or both at once.

Some use a certain ability to double their level, making them one-hit kill your party members with regular attacks.

Late game bosses and many marks have a "CT=0" ability that triggers once their HP falls to a certain amount. This ability lets the enemy attack at any time without having to wait for the charge time, meaning they can attack as fast as their attack animations can allow it. If you have your battle speed set to low, this will work heavily against you as the enemy wails on you while you wait for your turn to come up. Lord help you if this enemy is Hasted.

Some bosses also have "null evasion" as a passive ability, which means their attacks never miss. A lot of bosses and some regular enemies have "null vitality", which lets their status abilities hit every. single. time. unless you are immune to the effect in question. Also, most enemy abilities are programmed in as Technicks, meaning that they have no MP cost and bypass Silence.

Vaan is the Master of All being able to comfortably slide into any role, Balthier is a Lightning Bruiser while not as strong and durable as Vaan and Basch has higher speed but low magickal talent, Fran is the Master of None with no strengths in particular but no glaring flaws other then general mediocrity, Basch is a Mighty Glacier being the strongest but suffering from low speed and poor magic, Ashe is a Glass Cannon Magic Knight with fair strength and powerful magick but low speed and health, and Penelo is a textbook Squishy Wizard with high magical stats but low physical stats.

In terms of equipment, every weapon type has different speed at which it attacks, different combo rates to chain consecutive attacks, and use different stats to calculate damage, as well as variably being one-handed, two-handled, or long-range. Additionally, the three armor types raise different stats; heavy armor boosts Strength and has the best physical defense boosts, mage armor boosts Magic and has the best magical defense boosts, and light armor boosts HP and is balanced between physical and magical defense.

Cool Mask: The Judge Magisters' and the Garif's helmets. The latter is lampshaded by the cockatrice Shurry when she escapes Giza into Jahara.

Creating Life Is Bad: The extra bestiary entries for the Urutan-Yensa are project notes of the man who created the mimics as living weapons.

Cute Monster Girl: The Viera, who are bunny-girls. You just never see the males in-game.

Dark and Troubled Past: Everyone in the main party with the exception of Fran (who left her village voluntarily) have their own brand.

Both Vaan and Penelo are war orphans. While Vaan lost his parents to a plague unrelated to the invasion, his brother was killed while enlisting against the invasion.

Balthier, an ex-Archadian Judge, turned rogue after seeing his father, Dr. Cid, apparently lose his mind due to the nethicites.

Basch is forced to watch his homeland fell to the Archadian invasion, leaving his sick mother and twin brother, Gabranth.

Ashe is a princess of a subjugated kingdom who lost her family and husband and has to adapt herself from being an inactive princess to leader of the Resistance.

Day Old Legend: The game averts this. It's implied that the materials you sell eventually end up in the hands of craftsmen that make the stuff you buy there, but the best weapons are usually replicas of legendary weapons that are themselves nowhere to be found.

Dead All Along: After completing at least a couple of the Hunts, you find that the petitioner or someone else involved with the Hunt actually nipped it a while back and is petitioning from beyond the grave.

Death and the Maiden: Zalera the Death Seraph is depicted as a horned Lich-like monster carrying a semi-naked woman in his right arm. According to the lore surrounding him, he was tasked with judging the souls of the damned but rebelled against the gods, and the woman is a shamaness who he abducted in a bid to increase his powers.

Death Faked for You: Basch and Ashe are both pronounced dead by Ondore at the end of prologue, and it is revealed early in the game to not be true.

Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Originally, getting a game over meant starting over from the last save crystal you used. The HD remaster autosaves every time you enter a different area and you can also load from your autosave slot, thus dying is a minor inconvenience.

You get your first hunt assigned to you during the progression of the story, but if you forget to go back to Tomaj for your reward until after a number of other plot events — such as after you've gotten back from Nalbina — he'll complain about how long you took and say that he already heard about your success from someone else. He'll still give you your reward, of course.

Two guards block the entrance to the Mosphorean Highwaste from Nalbina Fortress. If you Sequence Break and get into the Highwaste another way then come back through the Fortress, they wonder how you got in and survived the trip through, and then offer to let you through this one time, or you can turn back.

The Henne Mines can only be reached via chocobo paths, or using the gate crystal in the dungeon. On the unfortunate chance you warp to the mines and don't have a teleport stone to warp away, there's a docile chocobo loitering around outside the mines so you won't be trapped there.

The International version removes the Necrohol Zodiac Spear chest mechanic from the game, mainly due to balance purposes (your jobs make tend to make you a lot stronger for most of the game now that you're focused). If you talk to an NPC next to the first jar to avoid, he says along the lines of "you can go ahead and grab this treasure here, that thing can no longer be obtained that way."

Disc-One Final Boss/Dungeon: Averted or outright subverted. Major boss battles happen to include very important plot points used, like how the Manufacted Nethicite is revealed during an boss battle with Tiamat due to Mjrn's twisted inflence from the Nethicite itself. This is because the Occuria have an indirect control through the Nethicite.

Disc-One Nuke: The game is in many ways designed to allow players to find powerful weapons and armor well before they become available in stores. You just have to know where to go and be willing to face powerful enemies to get them.

The Zodiac Spear, one of the best weapons in the game with power at least double the other entries listed here, can be acquired as soon as you set out to the Jahara. All that's stopping you is a Beef Gate, nothing a bit of level grinding can't fix. No longer possible in the Zodiac versions, however.

After killing eight of the optional bosses or marks, you can get the the Nihopalaoa. It causes all items in your inventory to have the opposite effect. Combine this with a Remedy and you can inflict every status effect in the game on a single enemy almost instantly, while also allowing turning the Phoenix Down into an item that inflicts Instant Death. From there the game's difficulty comes toppling down like a row of dominoes.

The Burning Bow is dropped by the Dive Talon, which is found in the Westersand, which can be accessed as soon as Vaan beats the Rogue Tomato. The Bow normally doesn't become available for purchase until you head to Archadia, more than a third of the way through the game.

The Gladius, a mid-powered dagger normally sold at the Jahara, can be stolen from another enemy in the Westerstand.

The Kotetsu, the first katana-type weapon (also normally not available until Jahara) can be dropped by an enemy on the Giza Plains, again accessible right after Vaan beats the Rogue Tomato.

The Deathbringer, a powerful sword normally sold in the final town in the game, can be stolen from a rare enemy in the Barheim Passage, which you can re-enter as soon as you finish Raithwall's Tomb. Also in the Barheim Passage, one can farm Mimeos for the Zeus Mace, one of the most powerful maces in the game, and the Francisca, one of the most powerful axes/hammers.

The Arcturus, the second most-powerful gun, can be unlocked at the Bazaar when you get to Raithwall's Tomb, provided you know the three loot items to unlock it. Meanwhile the Fomalhaut, the most powerful gun, can be found in the Lhusu Mines once you reach Mt. Bur-Omisace.

In the Zodiac Age re-release, trials can be done to get weaponry far in advance of what is available to the player at the time, in pots or stolen from mobs in the trials. While you can't officially save until completing 10 trials, the auto-save function kicks in after every trial, and the resulting auto-saves can be loaded into the regular game. Of note is the Karkata, the Knight's ultimate 1H sword, which can be stolen from the Flowering Cactus as early as Stage 3. While the grinding for LP can get tiresome, if you're at the point where you can equip a Golden Armlet, it takes no time at all to have a 92-Strength sword that deals Confuse on hit. Instant disk one nukes.

The Seitengrat Bow, the Game Breaking Infinity +1 Sword that completely shatters any semblance of difficulty in the gamenote We're talking about a bow that deals tens of thousands of HP in damage even at level 20., can be obtained as soon as Raithwall's Tomb is completed. Normally, the Seitengrat appears in an invisible chest on the Air Deck of a leisure craft airship to another city that has a 1% chance of appearing and a 1% chance of containing the bow, but people found a way of manipulating the RNG to make the bow easy to farm.

Paramina Rift has an area separated by a pond in the middle. You can see the cut-off bit from one side, but need to walk around to reach there.

Some areas of Garamsythe Waterway are separated by floodwaters you can control using the sluice gates.

Zertinan Caverns is made of Disconnected Side Areas. All seemingly bits and pieces areas strewn about are actually connected; you just need to run around and push rocks to chain them together. An elite mark located in Nam-Yensa Sandsea actually your rematch with Ba'Gamnan can only be reached through a convoluted pathway in Zertinan Caverns, which itself is entered from Ogir-Yensa Sandsea.

Disposable Woman: Judge Drace, who gets maybe ten minutes of screen-time before getting killed by Gabranth so he could continue to protect Larsa. Granted, all ten of those minutes are raw awesome, but it's kind of egregious considering she's the only major female character outside of the main party.

Downer Beginning: The opening up to the introduction of Vaan can be summed up as a Trauma Conga Line for Dalmasca as things seem to fall progressively From Bad to Worse. It first starts with the destruction of its ally, Nabradia, then the loss of Nalbina Fortress where we witness Prince Rasler's death, then the capitulation of King Raminas to Archadia where he was assassinated, and finally the supposed suicide of Princess Ashe, all of them culminating in Dalmasca becoming a colony of Archadia for two years and counting.

Dracolich: You can run into several types of these including a couple of rare monsters and a boss.

Drought Level of Doom: The game can be like this when trekking between key locations. The long road can wear you down with nary a save crystal or a shop in sight as you waste MP and items on monsters that keep swarming you.

Henne Mines has exactly one restore/save point: the Gate Crystal before the Tiamat boss battle. If you run out of MP and half of your party on the way to Zodiark, well, luck's simply not on your side.

And then there's the Great Crystal. There are upwards of 75 areas, but only one Save Crystal, located before the Ultima boss battle. Yes, it's not indicated on the map, either.

The Necrohol of Nabudis has no Save or Gate Crystal whatsoever. The nearest ones are the Gate Crystals of the Salikawood and Nabreus Deadlands, both equally distant and filled with tough enemies.

Eldritch Location: Giruvegan, full stop. The first thing signifying that there's something wrong with the place is that you can't see the Feywood from any direction in the entrance area; instead, you're in a set of platforms in the middle of an endless, calm open sea. And it gets worse from there.

Elemental Tiers: The elemental weapons vary wildly in power. Often they are only effective in the chapter they are first available.

You only get the first water-elemental spell, skip the second wind-elemental spell and have a fourth Fire spell called Ardor. In addition (and this seems to be a Final Fantasy tradition), you get no abilities that deal earth damage.

Another example. Each Esper is associated with an element, but they are divided into three tiers.

Yet another example. In this game, after performing a chain of Quickenings, you may perform an extra attack called a Concurrence. There are eight Concurrences, and while they all do Non-Elemental damage, their animations are very clearly based on the elements. Their order from weakest to strongest are : Inferno (fire), Cataclysm (earth), Torrent (water), Windburst (wind), Whiteout (ice), Ark Blast (lightning), Luminescence (light), and Black Hole (darkness).

Establishing Series Moment: Hits when you finish Raithwall's Tomb. Vossler betrays the party in negotiations with Ghis to allow Ashe to reclaim her throne and the Emperor will allow Dalmasca to return to independence, at least marginally. However, Ashe refuses the terms, seeing it as disgraceful and wanting to go to war with the Empire to avenge her kingdom's fall. This is where the player realizes the up-until-now simple and formulaic plot they've been going along with is actually a Grey and Gray MoralityDeconstructor Fleet.

A subversion to the trope. Since all battles take place in real time, there isn't any escape techniques. Holding the flee button forces the party to put away their weapons and their running speed is slightly increased to help them get away from enemies.

Enemies can run away like this, too. Usually on a path that attracts more enemies.

Even Evil Has Standards: Vayne may be an evil, scheming son-of-a-bitch, but his hostility appears to be reserved only for those who oppose him. He's polite and well-mannered during his first appearance in Rabanastre, even going so far as to insist that he be addressed as "Vayne" rather than "Lord Consul", a title he says he finds cumbersome. He declares himself "a citizen of Rabanastre" rather than acting like a ruler and orders his soldiers to be respectful to the other citizens.

Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Unusually for the series, mostly averted. Numerous enemies use the same weapons as the playable party — the player is probably too busy killing enemies to pay attention to what their weapon looks like, but they do match weapons the player can acquire. Played straight with the Behemoth and Reaver-type enemies, the Espers, and the Judges. However, the latter is excusable by means of Ace Custom for the Imperial elite, and the Behemoth and Reaver weapons are One Handed Zweihanders too big for the party to reasonably use even if they had the chance.

Exponential Plot Delay: The game moves very fast between Rabanastre and Bhujerba, moves at a steady pace through the Sandsea and the Tomb of Raithwall, then slows to a crawl between that and Draklor as you are sent on fetch quests by supporting characters that often take you through at least one new area to traverse, often more. Then you get to Giruvegan and suddenly the plot begins to rush to a close.

The Baknamy are expies of the otherwise recurring goblin enemies in the series, even having the Goblins' Signature MoveGoblin Punch.

Vayne after fusing with Venat, becomes The Undying, which takes a lot from Bahamut, as he appeared in previous games. The Undying, has a draconic, metallic form(Bahamut is the king of metallic dragons in Dungeons & Dragons), created from bits of Sky Fortress Bahamut fused with Vayne Novus. The Undying, also has Bahamut's characteristic attacks, Megaflare, Gigaflare, and Terraflare.

Yiazmat appears to be based on the recurringsuper boss Shinryu. Like Shinryu, it's a super boss, god-like holy dragon, its bestiary entry claims it's a guardian of a sacred blade (most probably the Recurring Infinity +1 Sword Ragnarok, which Shinryu often guards), and is probably the dragon which Omega Mark XII was designed to fight, as accepting the hunt for Shinryu unlocks the ability to fight Omega. And as it's known, Shinryu and Omega are classically connected to each other since their first apperance in Final Fantasy V. Additionally, Yiazmat is a pale white dragon, like the crystalline Shinryu.

There are early-game enemies called Slavens, which are described as being "beasts of burden gone feral" that are twice as tall as your characters, but that are barely any more dangerous than the wolves or bats from the areas they show up in.

The Wild Saurian you run into in the very first wild area of the game, however, is very much not this trope, which is why the thing doesn't attack first. Once you reach a certain point in the game, there's a one-fifth chance of a variant popping up, which attacks on sight and is even stronger than the Saurian regularly. There's also the pair of Werewolves in another early game area are hostile, and will one-hit kill you at that point in the game. Some in-game dialogue says that local villagers play chicken with them.

Fallen Angel: Invoked and played straight by Ultima, who led the Espers in rebellion against the Occuria.

Fran is implied to be this. Her older sister is the leader of their community, while her younger sister is well-known enough that many viera take notice of her absence from the Wood, usually, they couldn't care less of renegades. It's entirely likely that Fran would have been an important figure within Eruyt Village hadn't she chose to leave it.

Balthier, real name Ffamran mied Bunansa, used to serve as a Judge of Archadia before he called enough of his father's endless ramblings, left Archadia, and became a free-spirited sky pirate.

Fantastic Nuke: Nethicite is the reason Nabudis became the Necrohol of Nabudis. The interesting part is that it parallels Real Life nuclear technology - there is no way to undo its development. Not only are nethicite city-smashers being stockpiled, but originally there were huge swaths of land that airships couldn't fly over, all but isolating Ivalice from the rest of the world. Nethicite not only negates that effect, but makes airships faster. By endgame, just about every nation uses nethicite-enhanced airships.

Reddas: Would you like to know the best use of nethicite? Will or nil, I'll tell you. You pick it up, and throw it away.

I Love Nuclear Power/Nuclear Nasty: The high concentrations of Mist released by deifacted nethicite have a tendency to mutate monsters the same way nuclear radiation does in older works of fiction.

All that said, it can be put to peaceful uses, too. For example, Cid had developed a skystone that lets airships fly in Jagd. Reddas gives one to Balthier.

Dalmasca is inspired by cultures from the Fertile Crescent, being a strategic desert country inheriting relics from the ancient past and constantly in danger of being invaded by outsiders. Lowtown's architecture and music have an "Arabian Nights" Days theme. The Nebra's expanse and importance can be compared to the Tigris and Euphrates. Heck, the name Dalmasca sounds like and rhymes with Damascus.

Archadia is obviously based on The British Empire. Accent notwithstanding, they're famous for their airship superiority (airships in this game = ships in Early Modern real life). Their research for nethicites (mined from a flying continent populated by people speaking Indian-accented English) allow them to advance their technology much faster than their neighbors; in real-life, Britain pioneered the Industrial Revolution, including textile manufacturing worked from raw materials imported from its colonies (chiefly The Raj).

Almost every time the Mist turns up, expect to find an Esper soon after.

Fixed Damage Attack: 1000 Needles, which is only used by the Flowering Cactoid. You can learn it as a Technick. You also get Numerology, which deals damage based on the powers of 2.

Floating Continent: Bhujerba, which is a part of a collection of floating lands called Purvama. The floating rocks around the summit of Mt. Bur-Omisace are the remains of one that came crashing down in the distant past.

Flunky Boss: Several bosses and marks either call more enemies (the Thextera and Rafflesia, for instance) or have them there at the start of the battle (like the Wild Malboro or Doctor Cid). Subverted with others, which just appear in areas where said enemies would spawn anyway (case in point: Adrammelech, Roblon).

Especially in the earlier levels where you can't yet touch the Hunts you've been given. If you go through the game and just kill every monster on your way from point A to point B, you will not level up even near the amount you need to tackle the next area, usually. Sometimes even having all the Hunts that you can done will not save you from having to grind.

Besides that, Level Grinding in general is highly recommended in this game, and it could be argued that the enemies are designed in such a way to encourage this, because many have equipment pieces to be stolen or won that are much stronger than what you have at the point you first get to them. For example, an enemy met in the Giza Plains, the second area of the game, rarely drops a Katana with 52 attack, while an enemy in the Westersand (accessible at the same time) drops a Dagger with 45 Attack. You just need to know where to go, what to kill, and have the willingness to invest the time in getting it.

Foreshadowing: Balthier's Mysterious Past is hinted at quite a bit in the earlier parts of the game. Notice how he flinches or otherwise perks up whenever nethicite or Draklor Laboratory are mentioned. To say nothing of his accent, and this particular line of dialogue to Larsa:

Balthier: "You can never know another, even your father."

Framing Device: The entire story is described in Marquis Ondore's diaries and documents. Often, especially after important events, he will narrate from them personally.

The Friends Who Never Hang: What everyone can agree on about the game's shortcoming is that it has very little in character interaction between the main party. General Character Development is also sparse. All characters do communicate with each other to at some point, but basically they're left on their own; by the end of the game, they may very well still be strangers.

Ashe only has significant development to her friendship with Balthier. She has some interaction with Vaan, though it mostly delves on recounting their shared tragic past.

Vaan is childhood friends with Penelo and has a very inconsistent mentor relationship with Balthier that never really goes anywhere.

Balthier most often talks to Ashe, acts as a sort-of mentor to Vaan, is Fran's partner and pretty much ignores the rest aside from scattered dialogue.

Fran is Balthier's partner, and acts as Penelo's mentor in a similar vein as Balthier to Vaan; otherwise, she has no real bond with any of the other characters.

Basch is there to protect Ashe (though once her quarrel with him ends, they rarely speak to each other), sometimes banters with Vaan and has no significant relationship with anyone else.

Penelo is Vaan's childhood friend and seems to look up to Fran. That's it.

Gambit Pileup: When the creators of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story are involved, and it's the same world as in those games, this is only expected. You'd best pay attention during cutscenes because the game does not spoonfeed you the plot as you may expect from some other Final Fantasy games, said plot concerning the political struggles of two feuding nations and their elite generals as well as the various insurgents, some within their ranks, who are trying to keep them from going to war with each other.

Vorpal Bunny, good god. Almost all of the Dreamhare monsters are like this.

The Trickster will also often run away.

Getting Crap Past the Radar: The textures for the wolf enemies. They were... very, very realistically detailed. To the point that you could tell that the wolves were, in fact, females. And that the larger one used as a bounty was in heat.

Nabudis, though the Baknamy call it their home of sorts (yes, they're living humanoids). One even sets up an improvised store there. It's unclear whether they're already present since before the nethicite's explosion, though.

Giruvegan is also an example, regardless of how impracticable the whole place is for habitation. Then again, considering that it's been abandoned for millennia; who knows what beings made their home there.

Ghostly Goals: Some of the deathscythes, such as the Ixtab mark, are vengeful spirits. Some of the ghost enemies remain in the mortal world because of regrets or hatred.

Glowing Eyes of Doom: A lot of monsters have these in any number of different colors. Adrammelech briefly sports this as his boss fight starts. In addition, the second form of the final boss has them at certain points

God of Evil: Debatable. Venat, the heretic is substantially more "evil" in action, but could also be considered a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Also subverted in that the Occuria don't refer to themselves as "gods", whereas everybody else does. It's entirely possible that there's something(s) much bigger out there in the XII world than them.

... Except the good guys are monarchist, and the bad guys, while still called an 'Empire', actually have democratically elected leaders... Well, it's a little more complex than that: Dalmasca had a House of Commons that still exists (albeit with little power) under Archadian rule, and if you listen to NPCs in Archadia, you will learn that the senate is controlled by the wealthiest families of the Empire. The greatest irony about the Empire is that the ruling House Solidor rose to power by taking control of the army and making sure that it remained a meritocratic institution. The brilliance is that while there is a clear social divide in Archadia, the game drops subtle hints that show that the Archadian army allows people from different social background to work together and that people from unprivileged origins can rise to the top of the hierarchy (a feat nearly impossible in the civilian society), thus explaining why Vayne is popular and why Larsa is pretty certain for most of the game that his family holds the moral high ground.

Additionally, the Archadian Empire isn't evil — despite their leaders' actions in the war, many Imperials are usually decent guys who uphold the safety of the Empire's citizens, even in conquered territories, and the Archadian people are as sympathetic and human as anyone from Rabanastre. That doesn't change the fact that Vayne is still a megalomaniacal asshole who wants to rule the world, nor does it change the fact that the Empire conquered other realms for power. It's more of a case of both sides having issues. The good guys are just a lot better.

Gratuitous Foreign Language: Sanskrit. The Bhujerbans use it often. Bhadra is essentially the Sanskrit version of Sir/Madam. Parijanah means "guide". Madhu means "honey". And there are various other examples too, such as the many rooms of the Great Crystal.

Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: Literally, in the case of Venat and occasionally the Judges Magister. The rest of the Occuria speak in iambic tetrameter.

Gratuitous Spanish: The Great Crystal's name in Japanese is "Cristal Grande", which translates to 'Big Crystal' in Spanish. Almost Gratuituous Portugese, too, but the right expression in Portuguese would be "Grande Cristal".

Great Offscreen War: Archadia and Rozarria have had many wars in the past. You're actually in the middle of one during the opening movie and the prologue with Reks. At the present they're currently on a ceasefire (established after Archadia conquered Dalmasca) but all options to continue the war are on the table.

Green Hill Zone: Ozmone Plain, Tchita Uplands, and Cerobi Steppe. Unusual in that none of them are visited early; Cerobi Steppe is actually one of the end-game zones, and an optional one on top of that.

Word of God says they actively went for this, giving the party members character flaws and the antagonists virtues. In their own way everyone is just doing what they think is right, for themselves, for others or for their country, and it's not hard to at least understand why they feel the way they do, even if you don't agree.

It even continues into the credits, what with the still image of a quite happy (and sane) looking Dr. Cid holding baby Balthier, who is turns out from said image is the spitting image of his father in his younger days.

The Grim Reaper: Zalera's bestiary description states that he judged men upon their deaths; he also bears some common characteristics of a traditional Grim Reaper. (His skeletal appearance, ability to cause instant death). Ultima also fills a role of the Grim Reaper, her bestiary entry describes her as guiding souls to heaven before she rebelled against the Occuria.

Guide Dang It!: The game has a slew of optional content that you will never know even exists, much less how to access them. The Clan Primer and NPC conversations can give vague hints to some of them, but not enough for you to actually figure out what you have to do.

The Zodiac Spear, the most powerful weapon in the game, is found in a treasure pot in the Necrohol of Nabudis, but only if you avoid opening four otherwise completely innocuous chests throughout the rest of the game; there are not hints to this nor an explanation for why opening these chests causes the Spear not to spawn. The only other way to get is in a specific pot in another area, that has one in a hundred chance of holding the Spear, on top of a 10% chance of the chest appearing in the first place. The Zodiac releases remove the spear from here, and in turn place it in a treasure chest that has a 10% chance of appearing, and a sum 0.1% chance of holding the spear.

The Bazaar will eventually sell the best equipment in the game, but only if you sell the right combination of loot items in the proper quantities. At no time does anyone tell you what loot items need to be sold in what quantities to unlock which items. Additionally, the game doesn't tell you that when you unlock an item for purchase, the loot you sold to unlock it no longer registers. For instance, if one item needs two Quality Pelts to unlock, and another needs five, and you unlock the first item without unlocking the second, those first two Quality Pelts you got don't count towards the five you need for the second item to be unlocked.

Speaking of Loot, a lot of items can only be stolen/poached/dropped from a handful of enemies. Further complicating that is that many enemies have four tiers of drop items, three tiers of stealing items, two tiers of poached items, and each enemy also has a fifth drop item that they only drop if you have the Monograph corresponding to their species, so it can be very difficult to keep track of which enemies have which items to obtain. Unlocking Monographs at the Bazaar is also a Guide Dang It.note Though one not nearly as bad as the other examples here; with one exception that the game nudges you towards finding another way, the Monographs are all unlocked by speaking to shop merchants or checking the Hunt boards enough times, something a player will do in the normal course of a playthrough without prodding.

Getting those Loot items only comes after spawning the enemy that has them, because a lot of enemies, particularly Rare Game, only spawn under specific conditions in one single area. These conditions include certain weather conditions, having a party member at critical HP, killing all enemies in the area then leaving and returning, being in the area for a period of time, defeating a certain number of enemies in the area, not killing any enemies in the area before you get to their spawn point, and having the game's minute timer between two particular values when you enter the area.

Particular mention to the Tournesol, another of the most powerful weapons in the game, because it encompasses all of the above. It can only be obtained by purchasing it at the Bazaar by selling three each of three particular pieces of loot. You get one each of them from Montblanc for doing various tasks, so how do you get the other two each? You have to track down more very rare loot items, three for each loot piece, most only obtainable from one or two enemies, often times Rare Game. Hoard those nine very rare loot items, sell them to the Bazaar in the right quantities to unlock the Tournesol's trade components, buy those trade components, and then sell them back to unlock the sword at last.

It's fairly obvious that a lot of the dungeons you enter have additional areas, you can see them on the map and will often find locked gates and other obstacles blocking your path. Good luck figuring out how to access these areas though.

A lot of NPC sidequests, like the viera warrior in Rabanstre, the Phon Coast Hunt Club, the Windvane, and the Bhujerban Madhu, require talking to otherwise completely inconspicuous characters to even be aware their sidequest exists.

The Great Crystal is one of the most infuriating Magical Mystery Doors puzzle in the history of video games. It's a series of identical areas connected by pathways and waystones to teleport you between areas, many paths are blocked off by gates, the gates are deactivated with corresponding waystones but only stay open for a set amount of time before they close back up, the location names are in a foreign language and thus you're unlikely to get much help from to find your way, and the area is very large. And to top it all off, you basically have no map — rather than the traditional map the rest of the game uses, the Great Crystal basically throws up an image of the outside of the area and hovers a cursor over it to mark your place inside it. In lieu of a basic map courtesy of the internet, getting through the area requires hours, if not days, of diligent home map-making.

A number of the treasure chests that can only be opened once can be wasted by using (or sometimes not using) the Diamond Armlet, an accessory that improves the quality of items you find from chests, but sometimes screws you over by turning a really good item into vendor trash. This was at least fixed in the zodiac versions, in which all one time chests will always give you a specific treasure (though some of them still have a limited chance to spawn in the first place).

In the zodiac editions, the two most powerful weapons in the game are the Great Trango (1H sword) and the Seitengrat (bow) (which have the added bonus of being invisible when used) are ridiculously difficult to get without a guide.

Great Trango is found in two places. Either by stealing from Zodiark (at 3% chance of getting it), or by opening a chest in the Subterra level of Pharos (10% chance of chest appearing, 10% chance of chest containing an item, 2% chance of containing Great Trango, totaling a 1/5000 chance of getting it).

Seitengrat is found on the top deck of the transit airships. The chest that contains it is invisible, has no set spawn point, has a 1% chance of even spawning, and has a 1% chance of containing the Seitengrat (equaling 1/10000). You can only find the chest by running into it.

Hearing Voices: Dr. Cid. The first time we see him, he's chatting veey animatedly with the air to his right. General consensus among Imperials is that even in madness, he's brilliant. He's actually perfectly sane. He's just talking to Venatand is incredibly theatrical.

Heel–Face Turn: Several, some prior to the game's beginning. Arguably, Princess Ashe and friends, when they refuse to do the Occuria's bidding to exterminate the Empire. The aformentioned Gabranth as well.

Lampshaded by Balthier: "I am the leading man. Might need to do something heroic." He does, of course, go on to make a heroic sacrifice... and survive it. Smooth operator. It's lampshaded again, too: During the Heroic Sacrifice, Balthier tells the party members not to worry about him, as the leading man, he claims he can't die.

On the other hand, it's played surprisingly straight by several of the Judge Magisters, including Gabranth, Drace, and former Judge Zecht. Even Zargabaath is about to make one at the end, when some last-minute assistance makes it unnecessary.

Highly Visible Ninja: Up to one third of the game, and all of the Healing Checkpoint Crystals are either blue or reddish-brown. In the Stilshrine of Miriam, you run into a suspicious green one with the "Life Crystal" designation. Say hello to the most obvious Crystalbug in the game.

HP to 1: Sight Unseeing will reduce the target's health to single digits with a chance of the number selected being 0 (insta-kill) if the user is blinded. Unfortunately, it's pretty inaccurate and a lot of enemies are immune to it.

Humans Are the Real Monsters: Humes are portrayed as very power-hungry and driven to make their mark on the world due to their short lives, including via war and conquest. Ashe gets singled out several times by non-Hume characters (especially the viera) for embodying this trait including the Occuria.

And individual sections within these regions have their own ominous names of doom. A sampling: Subterra: Abyssal (Pharos at Ridorana), The Lost Way (Tchita Uplands), and, best of all for creepiness, a hidden and unmapped area called The Fog Mutters (Nabreus Deadlands).

Impersonating the Evil Twin: In order to keep up appearances (and to maintain the pretext of the fragile Archadia-Dalmasca peace treaty) Basch takes over the role (and identity) of Judge Gabranth at the end of the game from his twin brother Noah.

Improbable Aiming Skills: The Imperial Trooper who kills Rassler does so by shooting him with an arrow. Through the one unarmored spot on his body. While Rassler is mounted. In the middle of a pitched battle. Across the span of a bridge. At night. If it wasn't for the fact Basch kills him, the man would probably be deserving of a promotion.

Inconsistent Dub: In that subtitles and spoken dialogue often come out very different, due to the voice actors ad-libbing their lines sometimes. Though it's rare, sometimes the two just don't match up.

In every city, the chocobo stables are run by a pink moogle named Gurdy. Rabanastre even has three.

Played with in a subquest involving the delivery of a letter to various stewardesses working on the many airship routes across Ivalice. They really are sisters, all of them.

Infant Immortality: Averted. The deaths of infants and young children are mentioned frequently throughout the story and several Hunts (Antlion, Diabolos, etc.) revolve around missing or already dead kids. The petitioner of the Diabolos Hunt, Miclio, reveals that he's actually the ghost of a boy whose life was taken by the Child Snatcher.

Infinity -1 Sword: Every ultimate weapon, and sometimes even the next-best thing, is very rare to acquire. Either you have to gather specific quantities of very rare loot, the item is found in a single specific treasure chest, or dropped from a rare and/or powerful enemy. Thus you'll be spending most of the game making due with the second and third-best items.

The Danjuro, the ultimate dagger, is only dropped by the Larva Eater, a rare enemy spawned in the Great Crystal, which is That One Side Quest. Or you can just buy the slightly weaker Zwill Crossblade in Balfonheim.

The Yagyu Darkblade, the ultimate ninja sword, is a 3% drop from the Bombshell, an enemy that only has a 20% chance to spawn in one specific area in the Lhusu Mines. Or, you can just gather the moderately rare loot to unlock the Orochi at the Bazaar.

The best gun, the Fomalhaut, is found in a handful of chests across the game, and those chests may not even spawn or contain it. On the other hand the Arcturus can be found in the bazaar and is a famous Disc-One Nuke because it can be acquired as soon as you get to Raithwall's Tomb.

Infinity +1 Sword: Every weapon class has an ultimate weapon, but getting them is often ridiculously difficult due to needing lots of hard-to-find loot or only being dropped by a specific rare enemy.

A more practical example of Infinity +1 is the Tournesol. It requires an obscure chain of rare loot sales in the correct order and amount and overall costs an arm and a leg, but it has the second highest attack of the game's weapons, a very beefy 25 evasion, and a combo chance you'd expect out of a katana. Better still, you can actually obtain it in time to use it for a good portion of the endgame.

The Zodiac Spear combines this with Disc-One Nuke. In terms of raw power it has the highest attack strength in the game, even higher than the Tournesol and Wyrmhero Blade. It can be acquired as soon as the party can get to the Mosphoran Highwaste, but requires trekking through a Beef Gate several miles long to get.

Fran, as a Viera, is implied to possess powerful magical abilities ("The Magicks binding the door to the Oubliette are quite strong. Too strong even for my talents."). Until Lv.50, she has the second lowest Magic stat in the game. At Lv.99, she ends up with the third lowest Magic stat. Around the middle of the game, however, it's revealed that her magic has grown weaker since she left her Hidden Elf Village, so it's justified.

Fran and Balthier have slightly modified attack animations when using their default weapons (bows and guns, respectively.) Thing is, these animations take longer than the normal ones, making their rate of fire slower - meaning that they are each the worst at their preferred weapon type out of the party.

Injured Vulnerability: The Poach skill only works on weakened enemies, but you can gain rare items with it.

Instant Runes: Concurrences take the form of runic symbols appearing over enemies and blasting them with some elemental force (though all Concurrences are non-elemental). Each Esper appropriates one of the Concurrence graphics to reuse for their cinematic attack when fought as bosses.

Interface Screw: Some optional bosses such as the Espers are this way, particularly those that disable certain parts of your battle menu (you can't do standard attacks against one, you can't use items against another).

Intergenerational Friendship: Basch to everyone else in the party, especially Vaan and Penelo, with whom there is a 19-20 year age gap. Fran is more of a case of Mayfly–December Friendship, not to the mention the fact that she doesn't particularly ally herself to anyone other than Balthier.

Killer Rabbit: The late-game happy bunny species are this. You may be surprised at how the bunnies you encounter at Feywood are not docile and would blast you with Confuse every time they spot you (though their black-and-white coloration may give hint that something is not right). Fury is one, quite literally, as is the Vorpal Bunny whose name is practically a Shout-Out for the trope.

Knight in Shining Armor: Basch. More than one character is taken aback by his unimpeachable honor and unwavering sense of duty.

Lady Drunk: The Antlion sidequest woman is still feeling under the clouds even after her children came back home. You can give her some booze for 1000 gil, and she'll stand atop a box and do some weird movements.

Rabanastre is divided into two halves following its occupation by Archadian forces. "Lowtown", as its name suggests, lies beneath the streets and is comprised of storerooms, now converted into residences.

Archades, meanwhile, has an Old City and a New City. The New City is off limits to those of low social standing; those who can't afford entry permits are forced to stay in the Old City. Even the New City has parts that are off limits to those of not-quite-high social standing.

The Law of Conservation of Detail: The map provided by the game only covers the landmass of the important kingdoms and empires. Plus, you don't actually visit every inch of them, because the game's events are centered on Dalmasca and its surroundings. Compare this map◊ (indicating which area you can explore) with this◊ (used in Ondore's narration). Archadia and Rozarria have a lot more land stretching to the north and west, as well as colonies in Kerwon, but your northern limit is Archades (which is conveniently located close to Nabradia), and Rozarria is outright not explored (Jagd Yensa is entirely within Dalmascan territory).

Lazy Backup: Averted. If all three party members are KO'd, you have to switch in your reserve characters. In fact, the ONLY way to get a Game Over is to have all six party members wiped out. The active characters can even cast spells and use items on the reserves.

Right from the get-go, he refers to himself as "the leading man", and furthermore makes mention to "the story". He seems a bit too aware of his role as one of the leads in a video game. The irony is that he fancies himself the leading man, but that status more rightly belongs with Ashe or Basch. He's more Wrong Genre Savvy.

Balthier is also one of a few characters to break the fourth wall to give tutorials on how the game works, particularly the gambit system. The gambit system itself leans on the fourth wall considering conversations with NPCs in gambit shops and with one woman in Archades whose husband accidentally developed a shopping gambit that she was the unwitting guinea pig for.

Leitmotif: The very distinctive "Theme of FINAL FANTASY XII" (which itself uses the overworld theme to Final Fantasy I) and "Imperial Theme" are reprised throughout a variety of themes, such as the boss-battle "Strike of a Blade," "State of Urgency," and "Desperate Fight." Even the iconic "Prelude" is augmented with a few chords from it. The Final Battle theme, "The Battle for Freedom," includes a very somber, ominous arrangement of "Imperial Theme," but as the sequence plays out it is overcome and drowned out by a heroic version of the main theme.

Lens Flare: This is a fairly common effect in the game to the degree that this article showing preview screens from the game's high-definition The Zodiac Ageremaster made a point of it.

Lethal Chef: In the first game, a minor character who gives you a chop when you find a philosopher of food willing to try her... unusual cooking ("it's painful, yet delicious!"). Penelo starts out as this in Revenant Wings, but slowly improves over the course of the game to the point where Larsa gladly pays to have her airship cafe remodeled after sampling her cuisine.

Lethal Joke Item: The Manufacted Nethicite that Larsa gives you usually doesn't see much use, as while it gives you half-damage from elements, it casts permanent Silence on its user. But you can get a lot of mileage on it by designating someone a tank (Basch works well for this, as he doesn't come with any magic), and giving it to him. That way, you've got someone who can wade through elemental attacks with ease, and always has full MP to start a Quickening chain.

Lighthouse Point: The Pharos at Ridorana, which is named after the Greek word for lighthouse. However, it's never actually used for navigable purposes, since regular ships and airships can't even get close to it without losing power on the way or getting pulled into a cataract nearby. Also, the heroes visit it not to relight its source of luminosity, but to destroy it.

Limit Break: Each party member, guests aside, have three that can be chained together in a lengthy sequence. do it right and you can get a Concurrence to really up the damage output. Espers and Bosses seem to have them as well.

Loads and Loads of Sidequests: The game has tons of these, ranging from hunting marks and getting rewards to pretty much just running around and running stuff. It could be said that the amount of extra content is larger than the main plot.

The Lost Woods: Golmore Jungle and Feywood, especially the latter. Salikawood can be counted as well, though it's significantly less creepy and actually has amenities to back it up due to being located on an international trade route.

Mad Scientist: Subverted. Though Dr. Cid is the first Final Fantasy Cid to play the role of a villain all the way through, the invisible being he was seen talking to when he was introduced was real after all and Cid himself is just extremely theatrical.

Magitek: One of the most prolific uses in the series, even more than the Trope Namer. Airships run on mist-infused magicite but use spinning rings to somehow generate lift instead of traditional propellers and engines, guns and crossbows can somehow fire status and elementally-attuned bullets and bolts, the Moogling system teleports people across Rabanastre, and high exposure to mist can mutate animals and humans into superbeings with magical powers. And that's all within the first few hours of the game.

Male Gaze: The camera tends to hug the backsides of the party, and the females of the group have outfits that are very tight and form-fitting in that area.

Manual Leader, AI Party: It was the first game in the series to use this. The player controls one party member at once and has the option of customizing the AI of the party. You can override your party's AI at any time with the exception of espers and guest characters, though.

Marathon Boss: Omega Mk.XII (an hour), Hell Wyrm (hour and a half), and Yiazmat (twelve hours, which nabs the page's picture) are all offenders here. Zodiark can turn into this if you're not careful.

You can only complete the Clan Primer by killing a certain number of every single enemy in the game.

Getting some rare enemies requires chaining a specific number of a single enemy type. One of the biggest offenders is the Urutan Exile, which requires kill 100 Urutan Yensa in a row. However, it still pales in comparison to Larva Eater, whose guaranteed spawn requirement has you kill 256 same enemies in a row without using a single waystone. There is a much easier way, but it's, well, not guaranteed.

Maximum HP Reduction: A status ailment called "Disease" prevents healing, by reducing the victim's maximum HP any time they take damage.

Mayfly–December Friendship: Unlike the rest of the party, Fran is a viera, and her lifespan is three times that of a hume's. Her age is never given (and she refuses to give it when Vaan asks her). She had left Golmore Jungle fifty years before the events of the game - and before any of the other player characters were born. She is friends with Balthier, a hume who is only 22 years old. Though her age is not given, she could very well outlive the rest of the party.

May the Farce Be with You: In many respects, the game is very much a fantasy-themed take on Star Wars. Vaan, Balthier, Fran, Basch, and Ashe, are direct parallels to Luke, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-wan, and Leia, while of course the Archadians provide The Empire with Vayne as Palpatine, the Judge Magisters, particularly Gabranth, collectively stand in for Darth Vader, and Ba'gamnan is Boba Fett as a bounty hunter tracking the heroic outlaw. The story parallels include Ashe being a leader of the resistance who is captured and rescued aboard an airship, Basch being a once-famed knight now presumed dead, Balthier and Fran as outlaws who aid the group on promise of money, and an ally of theirs (Lando / Vossler) pretending to help them only to betray them to the Empire. Basically, think of how the original trilogy might go if Luke was just a Farm Boy instead of Darth Vader's son, and Final Fantasy XII is how things might play out. Even the locations provide parallels; the Sandsea with the Urutan-Yensa are Tatooine and the Tusken Raiders, Bhujerba is Cloud City as a flying city that is politically neutral, etc.

Money for Nothing: A standard trek through a dungeon or new area will get you plenty of loot to sell once you get to your next shop, and in the late game stronger enemies can drop loot items worth over a thousand gil each; a trip through a dungeon or area casually farming enemies will net you tens of thousands of gil in goods, while new equipment and the like will cost maybe a couple thousand each. In the end game all the best equipment isn't found in shops anyway, so the only thing you'll need to buy is restock of healing provisions, which are cheap in comparison to the money you're making dungeon trekking. The Zodiac version and its subequent PS4 remaster counter this with higher prices on most everything, but that only delays this trope kicking in. See also the next trope.

Money Sink: the Monographs, costing over 20,000 gil each, and the Canopic Jar, costing 250,000. They're far and away the most expensive things in the game, but you have to do it because it's the only way to get enemies to start dropping their fifth drop item, which are usually needed for the best bazaar goods.

Money Spider: In a departure for the series, averted. Only a small handful of enemies have gil to drop or steal, and it's usually humanoid enemies so it makes sense they'd be carrying money. Normal monsters and the like, you instead get loot items you can sell at the bazaar.

Mood Whiplash: Finding the Sword of Kings. After a lengthy dungeon and a battle with what is likely your second Esper, you enter a chamber full of Clock PunkMagitek. The magical machinery grinds to a halt, its glow fades, the sword floats forward for Ashe to take hold off...then clangs to the ground as she finds it too heavy to hold with one hand.

Motive Rant: Bergan gives one about Vayne's intentions after murdering the Gran-Kiltias.

Mouth Flaps: Subverted. The characters' mouths will sometimes move much faster than their lines would suggest, most notably the scene where Vaan delivers the sword to Vossler.

Mysterious Mist: The Mist, while normally used for everyday things such as cooking and piloting, can be collected inside nethicites for more powerful and (oftentimes) nefarious purposes. Some locations have such high concentrations of Mist that it manifests as a golden fog radiating throughout the area and reflecting its environments.

The name of one of the Bonus Bosses is Omega Mk. XII. Simple, but gets the point.

It doesn't end there. The name of the Ice Esper? Mateus. Esper of Gravity? Zeromus. Non-Elemental Esper? Exodus (mistranslated from Exdeath). Wind Esper? Chaos, and when you fight him, he's backed up by elementals corresponding to the Four Fiends to drive home the reference. The Water Esper, Famfrit, is referred to as the Darkening Cloud.

Most of the Airships are named after some of the iconic summons and characters in the series.

The Final Boss, the Undying, fusion of Big Bads Venat and Vayne, is a literal mechanical dragon. In addition, some of its special attacks have Flare in their names (e.g. "Mega Flare"). Most of the parts that make up this monstrosity came from the Airship/fortress "Bahamut".

See Gilgamesh and his, erm, "borrowed" swords.

The whole last chapter of the game seems to be an extended mythology gag. Let's see... The party climbs an incredibly tall, well-guarded tower to obtain the ultimate power, and upon leaving, they find the Emperor hovering outside of their hometown in a large flying fortress guarded by a cyclone. Hmmm, now where have I heard that one before?

There's actually an homage to Final Fantasy's rival series, Dragon Quest, in the form of the Wyrmhero Blade (Called 'Tolo's Sword' in Japan.), modeled after the sword of the legendary hero Loto (also known as Erdrick).

A stranger form of Mythology Gag is found in Yiazmat's name. Yasumi Matsuno, the man behind Ivalice, was known to his peers as 'YAZMAT.'

At the end of the game Balthier is said to be off looking for the "Cache of Glabados"—a reference to St. Ajora Glabados of Final Fantasy Tactics. According to background information, Ajora is supposedly alive around the time in Ivalice when Final Fantasy XII occurs. Balthier is still looking for it when he appears as a cameo in the PSP version of Tactics. How he did the Time Travel is not explained, but, unlike Cloud, nobody sees him as strange because he's talking about something that probably has some (even if probably different) meaning in their timeline.

In Final Fantasy X, when fighting the Behemoth enemy, Wakka will sometimes quip "How many steaks do you think we can get out of these?" In Final Fantasy XII, the Behemoth enemies sometimes drop the Loot item "Behemoth Steak".

The differences might be due to translation, but Ashe loosely quotes another Final Fantasy Princess, Garnet Til Alexandros, at least twice:

Garnet: I have a favour to ask of you - I wish to be kidnapped right away!

Ashe: You're sky pirates, aren't you? Then steal me! Is that too much to ask?

Garnet: Someday I will be queen, but I will always be myself.

Ashe: I am simply myself, no more and no less. And I want only to be free.

Nerf: Green Magick got this hard in the International version. In the original release, Green Magick was about buffs and debuffs; it includes Sleep, Silence, Blind, Protect, and Shell, their "-ga" upgrades, as well as Bravery and Faith. For the International version those all got reclassified under White and Black Magicks. Green Magick now consists of exactly six spells; Oil, Reverse, Decoy, Drain, Syphon, and Bubble. While those spells are nowhere near useless, the loss of all the other spells it once had means Green Magick is far less useful.

New Game+: In the International version. Beat the game, and it unlocks this, where nothing carries over, but everyone starts at level 90 (not as great as you think; you'll find out fast just how gear-dependent this game is). Beat the 100-man trial, and you unlock New Game Minus, where no one gains any ExperiencePoints, period.

New World Tease: As stated above, you can reach the optional part of Henne Mines through Feywood as soon as the completion of the Mjrn subplot. However, the junction road is blocked by a rock that won't disappear until you beat Zodiark, whose earliest access is granted after you beat Giruvegan. And you probably won't risk going there unprepared, considering the Abysteels can do a quick work of your party before you even have a chance to flee.

Noob Cave: The Giza Plains and the Estersand have fairly weak enemies you can easily grind for EXP and LP, but they also contain much stronger foes at least 20 levels above yours that serve as the Beef Gate if you are not careful. There are also Giza bunnies and Bangaa watchmen that will heal and buff your party since you don't have any healing and buffing magic yet.

No OSHA Compliance: The city of Bhujerba is on a floating continent in the sky, and some portions of the city have no railings. However, it's said in-game that no one who falls from Bhujerba dies, and a fallen Bhujerban is found in Phon Coast, amnesiac but alive.

Non-Human Undead: Many of the monster types have an undead version. Examples include undead wolves, undead war horses, undead vampire bats, undead slimes, and undead bombs. There's also the requisite undead boss who is a Conjoined Twins demon with visible skull.

Older Than They Look: The Viera live much for longer than Humes. Fran for example, left her village 50 years before the start of the game, yet still looks like a fit twentysomething.

Ominous Fog: Nabreus Deadlands and Feywood have this. In the case of Feywood, the last two areas of the level (one of which is the ironically named "Ice Field of Clearsight") are nigh-impossible to travel through due to being basically a giant empty football field covered with fog that reduces visibility to less than several feet. You may be left wandering through the area until suddenly stumbling on a white ghastly T-Rex that instantly charges at you.

One-Hit-Point Wonder: Disease lasts after a character has been KO'd, meaning that you first have to revive them, then remove the status, THEN heal them.

One Time Dungeon: Several examples. Some of them are removed from the world map after the player finishes them, but others are not.

Nalbina fortress, which is destroyed during the attack in the prologue.

Rabanastre Palace during the heist.

Nalbina Dungeon is only accessible during your escape.

Several airship dungeons, including the Leviathan and Shiva, though the latter is less of a dungeon than an area for a Climax Boss fight.

Draklor Laboratory in Archades.

One-Winged Angel: The final form of the final boss has wings formed out of parts of Sky Fortress Bahamut.

Only One Name: In a game where most characters have not just first and last names, but middle names too, Vaan, Fran, Penelo, and Reks only have first names. With Fran it's a cultural thing, while Vaan and Penelo are commoners and orphans. Reks, in addition to being a commoner and orphan, doesn't live long enough to need a last name.

Organ Drops: Since the only enemies that carry money are, logically enough, humanoids, harvesting organs is the main way to earn cash. This produces a bit of Fridge Logic when chaining kills of the same type, which improves both drop rates and drop quantity - just how many pelts does a single wolf have? This can be combined with Video Game Stealing to result in removing the pelt (aka, the skin) of a wolf before killing it to get another 4 or 5 pelts.

Our Liches Are Different: Zombie mages are described in the bestiary as mages who wanted to live forever, but settled for undeath.

Our Werewolves Are Different: Bipedal monsters called "Werewolves" live in the Giza Plains south of Dalmasca. They're similar in function to the Behemoths encountered much later, but lore from the game's Monster Compendium claims that they used to be human, and became transformed into monsters after eating some kind of contaminated meat.

It usually isn't too difficult to tell what treasure pots are really Mimics, especially later in the game when some Mimics are bright red or vibrant silver and blue, while the treasure pots they're supposed to be hiding as are usually gray and black. The rare enemy Killbug is the same color as a treasure pot, except that when it disguises itself it's as tall as the party members.

The famous sequence in which Vaan runs around Bhujerba declaring himself "Basch fon Ronsenberg of Dalmasca!" is a subversion: it was designed to stir up trouble rather than convince anyone that he really was Basch. It worked.

Party in My Pocket: In towns your party is represented by Vaan (even if he's not in the active party). Out in the field and in dungeons your three active characters (and whatever guests are with you) are always present and can be swapped out for your reserves at any moment.

Frozen tundra and mountains border lush tropical jungles. Most oddly, Mt. Bur-Omisace, at the top of a long climb through the frozen Paramina Rift, is relatively nice & sunny (or rainy). It's warmer on top of the mountain than at the base! Similarly, the continent temperature varies strongly east-to-west instead of north-to-south. Of course, this is in a game with sand seas & floating continents.

It is heavily implied the Mist has a profound effect on the environment and the ecology, so Mist concentrations are likely the cause of Kerwon's badly put-together jigsaw puzzle status.

There's also the fact that with certain environmental conditions (mainly volcanic heat), things like Mt. Bur-Omisace is very much in the realm of possibility.

Pause Scumming: The player can enter the party menu any time, during combat or otherwise. This enables such things as removing equipment from characters who are under Confusion ailment and about to murder a party member, or switching accessories and armour to nullify the effect of a status ailment or elemental spell the enemy is readying.

The most famous early-game instance is the two Werewolves in the southern area of the Giza Plains. A pair of Level 20 enemies with approximately 2,500 HP, they'll crush your Level 5 Vaan easily. However, abusing Quickenings to kill them nets you 1,200 Exp a kill, and then you can run away to the Save Crystal, restore your MP, zone away to respawn the Werewolves, and go back to do it again. You not only get lots of exp, but they drop good quality loot including the Kotetsu, a Disc-One Nuke weapon.

Almost as famous is the rare game Dustia, which requires you to lower your HP to below 10% to make it appear in a specific area of the Dalmasca Westersand. Killing it is as easy as using a Phoenix Down on it, it gives you ~1,100 XP, and it could drop the Book of Orgain, which you can sell for a tidy profit and use to buy more Phoenix Downs from Nalbina to continue the process.

Setting up the proper gambits in the Stillshrine of Miriam allows you to level infinitely off of Negalmuur, a rare game that spawns undead to fight you. There's always the risk of Negalmuur using Doom on your party, but the right accessories can make that threat negligible.

The Henne Mines have an area where several Jellies spawn. If the player kills them using Break, they will respawn endlessly. A proper Gambit set-up here results in the party killing an endless supply of Jellies at little risk to themselves, and you can let the game run for hours as they do so.

Gaining early access to later areas allows you to grind off of more powerful enemies who provide more XP, though it almost requires you use the many Disc-One Nuke weapons available to survive. Coupled with the Embroidered Tippet, your party will often skyrocket in levels after only a few minutes of work.

Percent Damage Attack: Gravity and its variants. Enemies also have abilities like Tri-Attack, which deals damage equal to a third of the target's health. The game determines damage using the target's maximum health.

Pyrrhic Villainy: Come the end of the game Venat accomplishes every one of her implied or stated goals, despite her plan ending with herself, Vayne, and Cid dead, Archadia in ruins militarily and its government in the hands of a literal child, and with the rest of the Occuria still very much alive, but now ostensibly powerless. Seeing as how most of this actually benefits the heroes, they are all reasonably okay with it.

Point Build System: The License Grid, which was the same for all six characters and thus led to a certain amount of homogeniety within characters. The Japan-only international version gives you the option of switching to a Class and Level System for your License Grids. The Zodiac Age not only gives you the class system from the International edition, but also allows you to pick a second class for each character.

Point of No Return: Of the merciful kind, as the game clearly warns you that once you go for the final area, you cannot go back. Furthermore, at several points the game advises you to save in a new slot because you won't be able to go back for a while.

Portal Network: You can expend a teleport stone to use save crystals you've visited before to get to all the important locations in the world. In fact, despite Balthier owning an airship, this will be your dominant means of long-distance transport in the game, and it can take you to far more locations than the airship can. Given that it's cheaper than commercial travel in the game (which you'll never use outside of one sidequest), one has to wonder if only clan people are allowed to use them—otherwise aerodromes would go out of business. Most likely, it's less 'allowed' and more that no one outside of clans and other adventurers can even get the stones needed to teleport-they only appear in the Clan marketplace and as loot drops from certain enemies. The average traveler would be stuck flying.

Port Town: The aptly named Port at Balfonheim (usually just called Balfonheim for short) is a colorful seaside town controlled by pirates.

The Power of the Sun: The bonus note in the bestiary for Garuda-Egi suggests that the sun is aligned with holy power, not fire, dispelling the "myth" that the sun is just a large, fiery sphere.

Power Nullifier: All nethicite disables the player's MP, with the in-game explanation of them absorbing magick nearby. Jagd is the location equivalent of this, as regular airships would be rendered immobile if they try to enter them. Equipping the airships with special skystones (a different type of magicite from nethicite) allow the vehicles to enter jagd territory.

Programming Game: The Gambit System, which has you set up conditions that the AI-controlled characters use to fight — unless, of course, you want to control all of them yourself, which is an entirely valid option.

When you're not busy carving your way through their ranks, most of the Archadians are a fairly decent lot. The Archadian civilians are worried about normal day-to-day issues like finding employment and buying their spouses gifts, and some of the Archadian soldiers stationed in Rabanastre show a genuine concern for its citizens and truly want to keep the peace. For example, the Wyvern Lord Hunt is petitioned by an Archadian soldier in the city who saw it while on patrol and is worried it could pose a threat to the city, but his superior brushed him off. Thus, he decided to pay money out of his own pocket to hire you to kill it before it causes trouble.

Purple Prose: Most characters, except for commoners like Vaan and Penelo, speak in a formal and somewhat antiquated manner. The Occuria in particular act like they're auditioning for Shakespeare. Even Magic Pots have abandoned their crude demand of "Gimme Elixir!" Instead they "clamor" for them.

Purposely Overpowered: The famous Wild Saurian in the Dalmasca Estersand, which is fast and nasty enough to wipe Vaan out in one hit if he throws the first punch. Emphasis on the "purposely," though, since it's meant to illustrate how overworld battles can let players avoid nasty surprises entirely. Also, it teacheshumility.

Q-S

Randomly Drops: Oh yes. Lots of rare equipment and loot can only be acquired as very low drops from one specific enemy. Hunting them down to get the best stuff in the game is a big part of gameplay.

Read the Freaking Manual: The reply of every person frustrated with newbies who equipped the Goddess Magicite or the Dawn/Dusk Shard (They cause forever zero MP or Silence as long as it's worn) without bothering to read the item information displayed on screen, and then asked why they couldn't use magick.

A major theme throughout the first half of the game is that Ashe is the Princess of Dalmasca... and that means next to squat, since her family is dead, she has no real political or military power, and no way to prove her royal heritage beyond people who physically recognize her. Ghis mocks her that if Archadia ever needs to use "Ashe's" influence, any young girl bearing a passing resemblance to her could be sold to the public as the princess to be the Empire's pawn, so they really don't even need Ashe.

After defeating the final boss, the party all take a breather to gaze at the sky, contemplate their victory and (in Balthier and Fran's case) do a fistpound. Then... a destroyed fighter crashes through the air to remind everyone that the two fleets don't magically know they ought to stop shooting each other, cue frantic scramble to announce a cease-fire.

Rasler plays the role of a Frontline General during the defense of Nalbina Fortress during the game's intro, but the downfall of his kingdom and the presumed death of his father leads him to ignoring Basch's (a much more experienced captain's) suggestions for retreat, the fortress being well overrun and no longer shielded from aerial bombardment due to the fall of its defensive Paling. He ends up being killed by a random Imperial Mook that manages to shoot him with an arrow.

Realpolitik: Pretty much the core theme of the game. The Archadean Empire is not on a war of conquest for glory or power, at least not only for those things, but because it is surrounded by nations who are the puppets of the Occuria. The twisted scheme to force a total surrender on Rabanastre — they couldn't comb the city for nethicite otherwise. Their quest for nethicite, again not for selfish reasons — nethicite is the tool used by the Occuria to manipulate humanity, and the only means Archades can fight back. Vayne is actually completely honest about accepting Rabanastre's hatred of him - he knows he's temporarily reduced them to slaves in his quest to free the world from the Occuria, and accepts that he'll be remembered as a monster for it. Anything as long as the Occuria are defeated, because that's the only way his nation will be safe. The numberless people who suffer and die due to this are regrettable but disposable.

Recurring Boss: Gilgamesh in more than one sense. You can fight him twice during the game. Furthermore, this could be the same Gilgamesh from previous Final Fantasy games as evidenced by him possessing various (replicas of) familiar swords such as the Gunblade and the Buster Sword. It was implied in an earlier game that Gilgamesh's "death" in FFV really just sent him careening through time and space, sticking his nose into every game along the way and borrowing trophies.

Repeatable Quest: The game has only one repeatable quest, and it's very modest, and available very early. By visiting the Giza village and running around in the Giza Plains area, you can create multiple Sunstones, which sell for what is a moderate bonus for the player at that part of the game — but the player could get the amount from just killing wolves and selling the loot, and on the side get both EXP and LP.

Revive Kills Zombie: The mechanism is there in the game, for example Dustia in the Westersand can be killed with a Phoenix Down. Other undead are immune to it though, for example the Wraith mark from one of the hunts.

Reverse Escort Mission: The tutorial has Reks being escorted by a small army of generic soldiers. They carry an infinite amount of potions and will use them on you the moment your HP runs low, making dying next to impossible. They also have a captain who can hit well with a sword.

Rewatch Bonus: Several parts of the game make more sense on the second playthrough now that the player knows some of the secrets of the various characters.

Listen carefully to Basch in the introductory sequence when he stabs Reks. He sounds a bit different, doesn't he? That's because by this point it's Gabranth impersonating Basch.

Watch Balthier's reactions to nethicite in the first parts of the game, like suddenly losing interest in the Dawn Shard and growing angry with Larsa in the Lhusu Mines. His behavior makes more sense once you find out he left Archades because of Cid's growing (perceived) insanity over studying nethicite.

Dr. Cid's Establishing Character Moment is him walking down the hall talking excitedly with himself. It's only around the last third of the game that you realize he's talking to Venat.

Royal Blood: Played with: Ashe's royal name carries weight, but not enough. The entire reason Ashe wants the Dawn Shard is because she needs power to back up her lineage and with it could try to rally kingdoms to her cause, or maybe negotiate for Dalmasca's freedom. Ghis comments though that the Shard is the real item of worth against her bloodline: if Archadia needs Ashe, they can come up with a look-alike and use the Shard to declare her the real thing.

Early on in the game, you'll start hearing random citizens in Bhujerba going on about "Bhujerban Madhu," a local brew that's in short supply. Then you start seeing NPCs who are suicidally depressed, half-drunk, or raging over a bad day, all of whom are jonesing for Bhujerban Madhu. Then you start finding caskets of Bhujerban Madhu. Then you start selling them...

Vossler is a straighter example, dying at approximately the quarter-way mark of the story. He's a former Guest-Star Party Member. At this point, it became clear that even the protagonists weren't completely safe.

Sacrificial Revival Spell: The game has the Revive Technick, but you don't get it until long after you got the basic Revive spell, and it is also on the market next to the more useful Arise spell. It becomes more useful in the Zodiac editions, when every class can learn most technicks including Revive, but not all classes can learn Raise or Arise.

Saharan Shipwreck: The airship wrecks in the middle of Ozmone Plain. The bestiary says that they are evidence of a war once fought above the area.

Saintly Church: The Church of Saint Kiltia, which worships Faram. Despite being adopted as state religion by kingdoms like Dalmasca, they mostly retreat to themselves and confine their acolytes at Mt. Bur-Omisace, where they offer refuge for those who lost their homes. Which just makes their sacking at the hands of Archadia that more anger-inducing.

Satanic Archetype: Venat is a divine being who rebelled against the rest of his kind and is thus considered a "heretic" by them. The means and nature of this rebellion are the same; giving humans knowledge that inspired them to go to war. To this purpose he made a deal with Cid and Vayne.

The Savage South: The Kerwon continent to the south, compared to Valendia and Ordalia, is wilder, harsher, and sparsely-populated. There is no identifiable kingdom or country and instead scattered settlements of mostly non-human beings, such as garifs and vieras, take up the populated areas.

Savage Wolves: A lot of regions have at least one variety of either these or hyenas.

Sea Sinkhole: The Ridorana Cataract is a huge sinkhole/whirlpool at the eastern edge of the sea that prevents access to the land beyond, since ordinary ships would be pulled into the cataract, while regular airships would lose power immediately since the whole area is a jagd.

Secret Shop: Very, very much. It's in the optional dungeon, which opens after you beat an optional boss that becomes available to fight midway through the game and is filled with powerful enemies, and it's invisible. Its best wares are only available near the end, though.

Sequel Difficulty Spike: While still not all that hard once you get the hang of the battle system, this is still one of the harder main series Final Fantasy games. Enemies have group attacks and status attacks and they will use them, and conversely paying or not paying attention to the elemental and status vulnerabilities of enemies can make a big difference. Level Grinding and the subquests aren't mandatory, but the game assumes you're at least taking your time between areas and not just zooming through them, because if you do you'll be overwhelmed in the next major area when the enemies suddenly get stronger. Money for Nothing is also averted: new skills and equipment are expensive and you may not always have enough loot to sell to afford what you want.

Most tech you see hails from the evil Archadian Empire which isn't evil at all, and the divine Occuria condemn it for manufacturing nethicite ("the power of the gods") because they don't want mortals to have control of their own fates.

Completely averted with the moogles, whose engineering skills are second to none, kupo! Moogles are the source of a lot of other technology, including Bhujerban airships as well.

Shifting Sand Land: The Estersand, Westersand, and the Yensa Sandseas. In fact, Dalmasca is mostly a desert kingdom, with Rabanastre being built around its largest oasis.

A rank for Clan Centurio is "Hedge Knight."note While "hedge knight" was a term used in medieval times, one being described as such would far more commonly be known as Knight-Errant until George R. R. Martin popularized the term.

A background conversation between Vaan, Penelo and Larsa while Ashe and Basch discuss weightier matters is a shout out to the notorious Good Bad Translation of Final Fantasy Tactics. "I had a good feeling." "This is the way!"

None of the traditional summons from the main games are featured in the game (a first!) but their names survive as the names of the airships used by the Archadian and Resistance fleets. Notably, two flagships which serve as mini-dungeons are Shiva and Leviathan, and the final dungeon is Bahamut.

Furthermore, the ship destroyed at the beginning is called "Tonberry."

Marquis Ondore's flagship is the only named one in the game not named for a summon or a monster, instead being called Garland, after the reoccurring Big Bad of the Francise.

At the start of the side-quest "Anne and her Sisters", the gentleman that Anne is talking to is named Rande.

A Pirate Gossip in the bar in Balfonheim tells you about a strange fellow he met who talked about defeating a wyrm on Cerobi Steppe... "But I heard all he does is yell at windmills. Pity the man that rides with him."

Bhujerba has a large castle, which sports a pair of massive angelic wings, a visual reference to Final Fantasy IX. There is also a scene set within this castle wherein a Rebellious Princess asks to be kidnapped by pirates in their airship.

Northswain's Glow's Japanese name is literally "North Star Bone Crushing Slash" which uses the same naming convention in Fist of the North Star.

Judges are knights wearing face obscuring helmets, who are the supreme enforcers of the law. Sounds familiar.

Skyscraper City: The Imperial City of Archades. The higher your residence is, the posher you are.

Fighting on the field in Ozmone Plain, Cerobi Steppe, Paramina Rift, and the Great Crystal. Also, hunting Marks in these areas (music does not change when fighting Marks (except for when luring out Ba'gamnan and encountering Gilgamesh, both of whom are considered bosses), such as Trickster in Paramina Rift, where you fight a particularly tough Bonus Boss with a calm movie score-like song playing.

The music does not change for Quickenings either, so you get to hear the calm music of Ozmone Plain or Paramina Rift while your characters tear asunder space and time.

Space Cold War: Rozarria = NATO, Archades = Warsaw Pact, Nethicite = Nuclear Weapons, Dalmasca = any country that got a proxy war in it such as Korea and Vietnam. This game could even be viewed as what would happen if during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba was researching ancient magic that would let them mass-produce even more nuclear weapons. All in all, this is why so much of the plot of the game is about politics and faction leaders while your party tries to get an edge in on the coming conflict — Rozarria and Archadia both don't trust the other to back down and don't want to do so themselves for fear of appearing weak, and while Archadia's nethicite research is allowing them to acquire more and more power, Rozarria is itching to seize the chance to make the first move before Archadia can. This is why the game's climax centers around stopping the battle between Archadia and the Resistance, because it's the chance Rozarria has been waiting for and if they get involved the dreaded world war will begin.

Space-Filling Empire: The Ivalice of the game has three major continents: Valendia, Ordalia, and Kerwon. Archadia dominates the Valendian continent and a small part of Kerwon, while Rozarria rules Ordalia and another part of Kerwon. The rest are either filled with smaller kingdoms that have since been colonized by the superpowers (Dalmasca, Nabradia), uninhabited, or sparsely populated.

Spanner in the Works: Despite his status as the Decoy Protagonist, Vaan of all people manages to undermine the Occuria's plans. His ability to see Reks, as Ashe saw Rasler, implies that the Occuria would use him were Ashe to turn aside from their plan for her. Instead, he overcomes the illusions, refuses to take revenge on behalf of his brother, and ultimately may have been the role model Ashe needed to reject the Occuria.

Stay in the Kitchen: Notes about the Viera state that they practice a Gender Flipped version of this - Viera males live separate from the women and generally do not leave their villages except for meeting with the Viera females that are generally seen.

Sticks to the Back: All greatswords stick directly to your back, with a slight clang, suggesting they're stuck there using magnets.

Ashe and her micro-skirt and Fran and her armored teddy for the guys, and Vaan's vest and pants for the girls. Penelo's skintight jumpsuit is modest by those standards, but still pretty revealing.

The arguable winner in this category is a minor NPC in Reddas' crew◊. She wears a coat that might as well not exist for all the coverage it provides and sports a pink g-string over hot pants. It's as though she's had clothing described to her, but doesn't actually understand the concept.

Supernatural Sensitivity: The Viera are very sensitive to Mist and will go on an uncontrollable rage if shoved into a place infested with it. However, if the Mist is very strong, they will instead collapse.

Supporting Protagonist: While Vaan is the POV character, the story is all about Ashe and, to a lesser extent, Basch.

Sword of Plot Advancement: Uniquely, all the magic doodads you find during the course of the game - such as Nethicite and the swords you're sent to find, etc. - are equippable but have ridiculously bad stats. Nethicite, true to its plot purpose of sucking up magic, reduces your MP to zero, but also reduces magic attacks against you big time. Helpful against the boss fight with Mateus. Justified in the case of the swords, seeing as they were made with the sole purpose of destroying nethicite and the Sun-Cryst and not for combat.

Tell Me How You Fight: Although with the proper license, any character can use any type of weapon, each of them has a particular style that's visible regardless of weapon equipped. Balthier tends to use everything one-handed, even two-handed weapons, which reflects on his laid-back persona. Fran holds anything that isn't a ranged weapon elegantly to one side. Vaan uses low, wide stances that, in real life, generally allows a person to cover ground quickly. Penelo, starting with a knife, has an acrobatic, dance-like fighting style most easily seen with her unarmed style with Brawler unlocked. Ashe's style is pretty defensive, with even her unarmed stance has her putting a hand up in front of her like she's using a shield. Basch is pretty much the Combat Pragmatist given that all his moves are basic strikes executed from a natural standing stance and border on Boring, but Practical.

Temple of Doom: The Stilshrine of Miriam is an abandoned temple loaded with deadly enemies, puzzles, and traps.

Tiered by Name: The game has another Omega named Omega Mark XII, one of the last marks you fight and also an optional superboss. In the Japan-exclusive version (named Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System) and in The Zodiac Age, Omega Mark XII is also fought on the 99th floor of trial mode.

To Be Lawful or Good: Judge Zargabaath struggles with this most of the game, usually deciding on Lawful.

Token Good Teammate: Precisely one example each of the Urutan-Yensa and Baknamy defy their species Always Chaotic Evil nature, with the former seeking outside help to slay his species' natural predator and being executed for it by the Urutan Queen and the latter being a secret merchant inside the Necrohol of Nabudis, ground zero of a Fantastic Nuke.

Too Dumb to Live: The second page of the Chimera Brain's entry in the Bestiary is Report #A0075 O.P.O.D:

Eat the head of the wise, and his wisdom you shall gain! Like eating food whence to gain nourishment. To determine the truth of this, I have just now eaten a whole chimera head. No effects as yet. On the morrow, we shall see.

No further reports, poacher no longer at large. Investigation closed, by Imperial Decree." Sgt. Xerse of the 8th

Treacherous Checkpoint: There are monsters that impersonate save crystals and attack the party if approached. Fortunately they turn into regular save crystals if defeated.

Turns Red: Via augments, everyone can do this; Last Stand, Spellbinder, and Adrenaline boost defense, magic power, and attack power, respectively, but only activate when at critical health. Many enemies also have these augments.

Underground Monkey: Subverted. The in-game encyclopedia gives long explanations on monster genus origins and the subtle differences between subspecies in different areas. The monsters are never just pallete swaps, but actually reflect their habitat in their designs.

An NPC called Ktjn is involved in an optional sidequest. According to supplementary materials, it's pronounced "kitten", though in Japanese it's "Katrine". Most of the other Viera fall under this too - Fran seems to be the only exception as one of the few Viera fortunate enough to afford a vowel in her name, which seems to fit considering she's not like other Viera.

Krjn (Caroline in other languages) is her sister.

Unique Enemy: The Wildsnake, Darkmare and Emperor Aevis and most rare game only appear in one location each. For the Darkmare to respawn, you have to leave the region where it can be found entirely. This trope applies even more to the trophy rare game, which actually ARE one-of-a-kind and never respawn after they are defeated.

Giruvegan has an infinitely huge interior that somehow manages to house a crystal so big it's designated as another subsection larger than the city itself. Then again, you're not supposed to go there unless you explicitly have the Occuria's blessing...

The Pharos is a lesser scale. Except for the topmost level housing the Sun-Cryst, the whole thing has no sky lobby. From the Heaven's Challenge sublevel 4 all the way to Floor 99, it's open space.

Unusable Enemy Equipment: A very strong aversion, many enemies that fight with weapons wield weapons that are recognizable as equipment the player can purchase and equip, and for the same reason enemies tend to wield a variety of different weapons. The only enemies that have unique weapons are the Behemoth-types, which have one-handed BFSes the party wouldn't be able to use anyway on account of them being so huge. Otherwise all enemy-exclusive equipment falls under the domain of bosses, who are usually ranking Imperial officers so it makes sense they'd have customized weaponry.

The "International Version: Zodiac Job System" re-release. It's subtitled "International" because the game is based on the international, i.e. US and EU versions, with English voice acting, adjusted spec ratio, and other bunch of technical things. However, the game then adds new content and gameplay that easily make it a whole new game outright. Due to this, it has been the target of some flak from those not understanding the logic of the name for supposedly being "international" while simultaneously a Japan-exclusive. Thankfully, the Zodiac Age version is released worldwide.

The Zodiac Age features a number of upgrades to bring the game into the modern age. Widescreen spec ratio is retained and the game features full high-definition graphic, as well as the latest in sound. The entire soundtrack has also been reorchestrated by the original composer. An upgraded high-speed feature has been implemented, as well as an auto-save, both of which are true blessings for the game's expansive field and dungeon areas. The Sky Pirate's Den has been replaced with the Trophy system, with a few new Trophies to boot. The overall game balance has been tweaked to make it somewhat easier compared with the International Zodiac Job System version, though the release is based upon that version. Perhaps the biggest change from IZJS is that you can select for each playable character two job License Boards, instead of just one, opening up new possibilities and strategies and marking another decrease in difficulty.

The citizens of Rabanastre who are poor or lose their wealth after the Archadian invasion are forced to reside in Lowtown, where they live in wretched but still otherwise normal existence. Keep in mind that Lowtown is a former warehouse.

Archades as well. Your social standing determines which part of the city that you can not only visit, but simply to enter; if you're very low-leveled, you can't even enter the city itself and must be kept waiting in the Old City to the north.

The most blatant example is the Water spell. In the original version of the game, you could only learn the basic Water spell and not the next tiers of the spell tree while enemies could use the stronger version of Water. The only way to do a ton of damage against enemies weak to water was to use a gun with bullets that have the water element.

Vendor Trash: It's your main source of income. Unlike previous entries, non-humanoid enemies (who make up 99% of enemies in the game) don't randomly drop gil when killed, they drop Loot instead, which you have to sell to make money. Humanoid enemies do drop money, and you can steal gil from some others, but that's a drop in the bucket.

Victory Pose: Each character has a multitude of victory poses available after boss fights, mainly depending on what sort of weapon they're carrying. An extensive list can be found here on the official Wiki.

Video Game Cruelty Potential: Some actions, when it comes to Gambits anyway, can only be set to be cast on enemies or on allies. However, there are not as many restrictions as you may think. You are within full rights to set up Gambits for your characters to attack themselves or each other over and over until they die, or cast status ailment magic on each other, heal it, and then cast it again. There's little practical reason for doing so, but if you're feeling sadistic, you can do it.

Video Game Delegation Penalty: Present in the Gambit system, which allows you to set orders for your party members who are not actively under your control. This allows you to setup your party members to work together efficiently without needing constant direction. However, even with very specific Gambits set, the AI-controlled characters may still not do what you want or need in a given situation. If you need them to do something very specific, your best bet is to switch to controlling that character manually and executing the action yourself.

The Walls Are Closing In: The game has two Demon Wall enemies. The first one you fight presents a twist — it is powered up and offers you little time to defeat it, but it is fortunately a Skippable Boss and you are meant to flee the battle by using the door that it would crush you against, and instead fight the second wall in the next room. The second one (the one you must defeat) is much weaker and offers much more time to win. If so desired, you can come back later in the game to rematch against the first wall. Unless of course, you've done a lot of Level Grinding, in which case you can just off the first one right away and pick up a weapon that you're not intended to have at that point in the game yet (still not quite the Infinity +1 Sword though, but it is one of the games many, many Disc One Nukes).

War Is Hell: Basch is very much of this opinion. Vossler believes this to an even greater degree, betraying Ashe in an attempt to peacefully restore Dalmasca. Larsa, too, aims for peace to protect the ordinary citizenry from the trials of war.

Wave Motion Gun: The battery of Mist Cannons mounted on the top levels of SkyFortressBahamut, used to sink (read:utterly disintegrate) Resistance cruisers in one shot.

"The Humes ever skew hist'ry's weave. With haste they move through too-short lives. Driven to err by base desires, t'ward waste and wasting on they run. Undying, we Occuria light the path for wayward sons of man.

"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Ashe is ruling Dalmasca as queen, Basch takes Gabranth's role as Judge of the now Emperor Larsa, and Vaan and Penelo are training to become sky pirates. The latter two also receive a letter from Balthier, revealing his and Fran's survival and something about an adventureat Glabados.

Will Talk for a Price: Jules of Archades, a "street-ear" who Balthier states would "bite a Gil given him by his own mother, and shave it by half to pay for her funeral." He's always willing to provide your party with information... for the right price.

Jules: I’ve a message from Master Balthier. He’s waiting in Central. He says to come quickly.

Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Awesomely averted. The semi-Shakespearean dialogue is performed so smoothly and naturally that you stop noticing pretty quickly. When you do notice it, it's only because it's awesome and memorable. This treatment was also present in Matsuno's previous Ivalice work, Vagrant Story.

Balthier, AKA Ffamran mied Bunansa, the son of one of the architects of the invasion.

Basch, the guy who took the fall for the invasion.

Vaan is the Player Character because he has the best perspective of the whole train wreck - a civilian who not only has to live in a conquered country, but lost family to the conquest. Penelo tags along with him to keep him from snapping due to the three blowhards who play their power games, ignoring how normal people suffered in the turmoil.

Fran is there to remind them that the world is bigger than humes and their squabbles.

Some of the Mark hunts are memorably harsh, particularly the "Legendary" ones such as the White Chocobo and Black Chocobo, who keel over with a pathetic "Kweh." It's enough to make an FF fan die inside.

The Behemoth King is tough to even find: the player must slay every monster in the south Feywood within a set time limit. Once the King perishes, its dossier reveals that it's a guardian spirit which protects the creatures of the Feywood. Oops.

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